A Rose by any Other Name Smells Just as Sweet (We Call it Soccer Prt 2)
So there will be more. But here’s instalment Two.
My point is not trivial. The insistence on the word ‘Football’ in the Australian media is holding the game back from the public mind. Now me merely stating that view will not convince anyone, so I ask that you read my points (including my first article) and THINK about this. I honestly and seriously believe that the Australian soccer community has so far lost the plot on this front.
First, in case anyone thinks I’m making this business up, consider the following sentences, from two bloggers I respect greatly for their love of the great game:
From Eamonn, of Nearpost: “It might be acceptable to Australians in State Of Origin or AFL but in my view football, men and women’s doesn’t need it.”
And from Ambrose’s Bloggerfella: “The only leagues I can think of which may offer precedent for the A-League’s four subs are the other Australian “football” leagues, the AFL and NRL, which both employ four-man interchange benches with unlimited changes allowed in AFL and 10 in NRL. Their formats are entirely different and irrelevant to football‘s.”
Now both of these intelligent people know the word ‘soccer’, they know what it means, it’s 100% in their vocabulary and, importantly, they have no other meaning for the word. Also, their audience also understands the word, unambiguously. From a purely editorial point of view, the word ‘soccer’ is appropriate in these sentences, for the very simple criteria of clarity of meaning.
Why don’t they use the word? This is just two cases from the past week. I see this editorial absurdity constantly. Now from an insider’s view they may even get a bit of congratulations for holding the flag or something. But from any other point of view (in Australia and many other countries) it just looks like they are, um, holding the flag. That is they look like they’re promoting an ideology or religion rather than a great game. They reinforce, every time they do this, the image of a slightly esoteric pursuit for foreigners and fanatics. It glares, and there’s no way that these writers aren’t self-conscious when they’re doing this.
In the second case the author goes further, and actually tries to imply that other football codes (there is no synonym for the word football-as-generic) shouldn’t be called that. That’s also common, from Les Murray for example: “so-called football codes”. Now that’s aggressive, even rude, toward codes that have generations of passionate and loyal followers, and even evokes the question, toward us, “Who’s afraid?” I’ll pursue that more in the future, but suffice to say here that it’s not helping anyone.
Ok, here’s another quote, from a bumper sticker I see around: “Support St Aidans’ Soccer.”
Now I have no idea about St Aidans, but this sticker is, by being around the place, also promoting the game I love to play and watch, so I think it’s cool that people have it on the back of their cars. Can anyone tell me what word they should use? Let’s just state the fucking obvious: “Support St Aidans’ Football” would simply NOT be promoting our game AT ALL. “Support St Aidans’ Football (Soccer)” would be editorially clumsy, I add because we actually see this absurdity, even in the mainstream press.
I’ve barely started. I know I’m up against pretty much the entire soccer community (‘football community’ would only make sense if I was referring to all the codes) here, but I know I’m right and I simply have to keep hammering this one.
For my money, every time the media, on radio, TV or in print is speaking of our game, which does have a greater actuality than a decade ago and has found its rightful place in our sports press (however reluctantly), the public should be seeing the word, the brand, SOCCER. Soccer, soccer, soccer. That’s what the public mind, however oblivious or married to other games they may be, would be being bombarded with. Bombarding it with yet more of the brand ‘Football, football, football’ does nothing. Read it again. From a promotion viewpoint, it does nothing.
Incidentally, on the three occasions I’ve been to the United States I’ve thought to ask everyday people whether they follow Gridiron. They have had no idea what I was talking about. They know it only as ‘football’. Funny how language works. And funny how authority doesn’t get to tell the public what words mean, except in Orwell’s dystopia. People decide what words mean, and linguists tell us why, whilst lexographers record the meanings in dictionaries. Next time you want to know what ‘soccer’ and ‘football’ mean in a particular language or dialect (and Australian is a dialect) try a dictionary. The FFA are not an authority, and neither are the fanatics, and neither am I.
Mnemonic Miscellanea
First getting to the game. For the first time I drove, and somehow got a park right next to the Paddo Pub, a mere block from the stadium. We were over an hour early but there was already thousands of people milling about (both the Paddo and the Caxton were packed with Orange), and we felt damn lucky to get the park.
Jacob and I were meeting a friend, Donald, at the Wally Lewis statue at 7pm, half hour before the game. (The game had already been rescheduled from 7 to 7.30 in order to get the expectedly large crowds into their seats.) So we had some food and wandered to the stadium, which took ages because of the crowd.
Almost there and a Sydney contingent of about 20 were marching directly behind us singing, “Oh, oooohh oohh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.. SYDNEY!” at the top of their voices. They sounded great – a bit too great for me so immediately after they got to the second, “SYDNEY!” I rejoined, “CAN’T PLAY!” at the top of my own not-soft voice. I didn’t even look around to see their response. Didn’t dare. But they shut up. The little bit of truth in what I shouted comes back in a reminiscence of a shouting Sydney crew after a QRvSFC game last season, “WE’RE SHIT BUT WE BEAT YOU!” It was great humour at the time and I remember Jacob and I laughing respectfully at their militant honesty. But last night they were shit and they didn’t beat us.
Ok, we met Donald. It was obviously going to be a huge crowd and I’m glad I bought my tickets on the net, which I’ve never done before for an A-League game.
Later Donald said he’d seen the ominous clouds in the sky, but I knew nothing. Seemed like great weather for 35,000 people to be milling about in.
The tickets were for the second level – Section 526 – but accidentally we ended up on the top level (eventually in 722). On the way up the stairwell, caged from the open air outside the stadium, we noticed it was raining (the view’s great anyway btw). When we got to the top (we didn’t dawdle or stop for drinks from the time we entered) we looked out into the stadium into an impenetrable curtain of sheeting water. Jacob and I spontaneously sprinted to the gate – one of those adrenalin-from-nowhere moments. The boys were still training, but there was already a glisten of water across the whole pitch. There were thousands running from the stands to the back areas. A long ball would land on the pitch and stop dead.
It was an extraordinarily timed (potential) disaster. First, if the game had have kicked off at 7pm as originally scheduled it would have had to be stopped, with very little warning, and there would have been a horrible stampede of 35,000 people. As it was the 35,000 people had well-and truly mobilised – they were for the most part in the stadium or directly outside it (there were many waterlogged people in the stands by kickoff), when the torrent hit. As it was there was a brilliant scene of an almost empty stadium (for the front three quarters) with a ring of packed people. Cancellation? Impossible. But if that rain had continued it would have been simply impossible to play. Extraordinary theatre.
The icing on our spectacle from above (where we were dry incidentally, apart from light spray from the lashing winds, and I’m sure we weren’t the only ones to permanently migrate to the very back) was the home and away hardcore crews at each end. Many of them stuck it out, leaving a blue and an orange front section full at respective ends, dervishly dancing and chanting in this outrageous torrent of water (it was too heavy to be called ‘rain’), knowing, so I think, that to break and run was to allow the other side’s fans to win. The players had gone off, the world had evacuated the cyclonic zone, except for these fans. In ones and twos members of each crew fled, having had enough, but as groups they held out until the end of the inclement. If anything, my report is that the Sydney fans won the contest. At the end their group was bigger, until the stands were reoccupied of course.
The next piece of Miscellanea is brought to you by the letter M: Matty McKay, Massimo Murdocca, Moore, Miniecon, McLaren, McLoughan, McMaster, Michael, Mitch and Marcinho. If we still had Milicic we could put out a fit, fairly coherent M11 to maul Melbourne and mince the Mariners. I’ve left out injured Matthew Ham.
Finally, with no bearing on last night at all because Reddy had sweet F to do, I think it is time to tribute Roar coach Fernando vas Alves. We’ve heard about how great Frank Farina is and we hear about how great many of the players are. But when we hear about how good Reddy is, and he has improved enormously since I’ve been watching him, and now how good McMaster is when he had to step up, surely it’s time to mention the Goalkeeper Coach.
For example, we heard of how last season McMaster as number two was snubbed for import Tando Velaphi, as if this, and the subsequent faith in McMaster this season, was all Frank. Surely Alves would have had a big part in these decisions, as he is the one constantly working with McMaster. But more broadly, this Alves bloke can obviously spot and develop young goalkeepers. I’ve never heard about the international market for goalkeeper coaches, but I reckon Alves could get ambitious if he wanted.
Have a good weekend. And good luck to the Mariners. I haven’t got any really strong feelings about who I want to win, and neither is this post especially mnemonic, but I’m moving with the letter M.
